Mark Sanders/Emil Karlsen
MUTED LANGUAGE
Bead Records
★★★★

TWO drummers drumming in free conversations of percussive beauty and virtuosity: that’s the truth of Muted Language, featuring the veteran south London-born Mark Sanders, and the young Norwegian, a fast learner in his craft, Emil Karlsen.

So many surfaces struck, rubbed, coaxed, massaged and stroked — of wood, leather, plastics and a host of metals from cymbals, gongs, dishes — a world of sounds and nature’s numb exteriors given new life and hope in the artistry of two exploring humans.

Words Not Spoken is the second track, yet these sounds are musical words spoken every day in the timbral symphonies that we hear as we walk down any road, any path through town or countryside. The sleeve photograph shows humans sitting, waiting at a bus stop. What percussive cries are they hearing?

Brilliant drumming by two fearless artisans; hearing, resounding the real world around us. Truth is in our ears.

Leap Day Trio
LIVE AT THE CAFE BOHEMIA
Giant StepArts Records
★★★

BETWEEN 1955 and 1960, Cafe Bohemia, in New York’s Greenwich Village, was a legendary jazz venue. Great records were made there by Miles, Blakey, Mingus and Coltrane.

Sixty years later the club has reopened and this album by drummer Matt Wilson, bassist Mimi Jones and tenor saxophonist Jeff Lederer is the first record to emerge from its second coming.

It bristles with sonic life. Wilson’s rocking drums sound like they are next to you. Lederer’s sax is like a multipitched voice proclaiming the present, and Mimi Jones’s delving, superbly resonating bass seems to be rising from the New York subway.

They are the Leap Day Trio, and how their music jumps! Hear them bounce on Dewey Spirit with Mimi’s trampolining bass. “There’s just a lot of breath in the sound,” asserts Lederer, but there’s vibrant body too. Take in Leap Leap and the beautifully poised Gospel Flowers: compelling music!

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet
WARM UP
Jazz in Britain Records
★★★★

THIS evocative, never-before released live 1965 double CD recording from The Highwayman, Camberley, brings back a British jazz era of sparkling musicianship.

Stretching out with zest and fire are some of the epoch’s finest players: saxophonist Don Rendell and trumpeter Ian Carr with pianist Michael Garrick, bassist Dave Green and drummer Trevor Tomkins, all recorded with such clarity and life that they could be playing  just a few feet away.

Hear Carr’s pointillistic fervour on Jonah and the Whale, Garrick’s cool artistry on every track — especially his own Sixth Seal, and Rendell’s powerful improvising capacity always in the warmest of tones. All grounded by Green’s relentless, plunging beat and Tomkins’s ever-listening, brotherly drums.

Standards too: Carr’s vibrant horn and Rendell’s flute dance through Autumn Leaves and Garrick puts his own lyrical touch to When I Fall in Love. Notes of combustion and beauty forged at every step.